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Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Book Giveaway: Ravens

“The Boatwrights just won $318 million in the Georgia State Lottery. It’s going to be the worst day of their lives.”

The book Ravens, by George Dawes Green is a compelling suspenseful novel centered on a huge lottery win that sparks envy, greed, extortion, insincere evangelism, worship, and revenge.

For an illustration of one of the critical scenes in the book, have a look at this Ravens YouTube video.

One of my favourite parts of Ravens was where an impostor lottery representative laid out the winners’ future:

“Sooner or later you’ll tank it [give up your copier business] and get yourself an estate in Hawaii. Then you can all get some sun, which’ll be great except you’ll get too much and you’ll start to look like iguanas. And you’ll try to make friends but who you can trust, right? So you won’t know anybody and you’ll stay home and watch TV and you’ll be lonely as hell and bored ...”

This nicely illustrates what can happen in the initial stages after a lottery win. Maybe Green can write a sequel that depicts the later stages of a lottery win, where the lucky winners run out of money and declare bankruptcy. Of course, it would be tricky to make such a sequel as entertaining as this book.

Ravens publisher, Grand Central Publishing, has graciously offered five giveaway copies for my readers. To enter the draw, send an email with the subject “Book” to the address shown on the upper right corner of this blog. The draw will close Saturday August 8 at noon. I will contact the winners to get (Canadian or American) postal addresses. Good luck!